Open Mixed Epee at SAS, Feb 8, 2014
http://askfred.net/Results/results.php?tournament_id=24374&highlight_competitor_id=91067&event_id=97554
Pools were a little weird. I beat Joel Howard, barely, 5-4, and I beat the A fencer in the pool, Hans Engel. Didn't expect to win but got up a few points quickly. I think it was 3-1 at one point and I began to think I had it in the bag. Then Hans came back a bit. I think we went to 4-3 then ended with a double, 5-4. One touch I remember involved an exchange that seemed like someone should have scored but no one did. I retreated and glanced at the scoring box, which apparently caused Hans to launch a long attack ending in a fleche. I saw it coming, stood my ground then ducked under his fleche and hit him. That one felt nice. Hans went on to win first place in the tournament and was rather amazing to watch in the final DEs, which made it even stranger and cool that I beat him in the pools.
I lost my other three pool bouts. Matthew Comes left me flummoxed, as usual. I knew he would try at least one toe touch, yet he scored one anyway. He also got me once or twice with his amazing infighting. I lost 2-5. I did better against Johannes Klein, but lost 4-5. I've beaten him in pools before, mostly with hand hits, but couldn't pull it off this time. I made a couple bad attacks. In one case I was eager to try the against-lefties-attack Russ taught me, of fleching with a feint in 8 and a "rotation" into 6. It didn't work against Johannes, at least this time.
My last pool bout was against Andrew Lee. We hadn't fenced in a long time but I had seen him a lot. I knew he was technically good, but I thought I could outsmart him with second intentions, broken time, confusing patterns, etc, coupled with hard beats and binds. And I made some points that way, but he scored some nice ones too. If I remember right I kept pushing distance on him, which he took advantage of with a fast fleche or two. One of my points involved repeatedly pushing his blade into 8, as if I wanted to do a parry 8 or bind him in 8—not only was I trying to set up a ruse but I noticed how quickly he disengaged back to 6. Finally I attacked with a hint of the same feint toward 8 then instead binding in 7 and sweeping up to 6. I love it when parries/binds in 7 work. Later in the bout I tried to set it up again with an 8 invitation and close distance. But he simply picked my hand. My invitation was rather too inviting. Anyway, in the end he won, 5-3. So, weird pool—we had one each of U, E, D, C, B, and A, and I beat the E and the A but lost to the D, C, and B.
Beating Hans though was the key to the DEs, not that I knew it at the time. But thanks to that I seeded higher than I would have, although still below average—12th out of 18. So like most of us I got a bye in the table of 16 and was paired with the 5th seed in the table of 8, which turned out to be my clubmate Jim Arrigoni, who had done quite well in the pools. Had I done any worse my DE would have been against Yuly or Matthew Comes, or Varney or George Raush. Oddly, if I had done a little better in the pools I might have been paired with someone seeded a little below Jim—like Johannes, Andrea Matessi, Russ, or Hans Engel. I'm not sure I could have beaten any of those guys either. Jim I had a decent chance against, I thought. We fence all the time in practice and are about evenly matched. He did well in a tournament a while ago and earned a D, while I've been puttering around with my U. I was more than ready to get out of the U zone and fenced Jim as well as I could.
It was a fairly close bout. Mostly we were tied or I was a point or two up, but toward the end he pulled ahead a couple points. I was quite concerned when he was up 12-10, but I managed to pull back into things, tying at 13-13 and then pulling ahead 14-13. Then I was willing to try for a double but got a single instead, winning 15-13. That put me into the table of 8 and at least 8th place, which in this A1 tournament meant earning an E. *Finally*.
My tactics with Jim changed during the bout and were a little unusual compared to how we tend to fence in practice. At first I worked on a patient game, trying to get him to fleche because in practice I can often catch his fleches. But this time I wasn't catching them, rather I kept parrying them onto my own legs. In one case he fleched and our blades ended up down around my legs, he missed my legs but by chance his tip ended up slipping into my back foot shoe. Since my more passive game wasn't working I switched to a more aggressive style, pushing, changing blade positions and distances, tapping and beating his blade a lot, and so on. That approach seemed to work a bit better, but not without mistakes. By closing distance I risked getting hit on the hand, or worse, pushing my own hand onto his tip like I did one time. I kept trying an attack I've used in practice—using footwork and blade positions to gain just an inch or two of distance, then feinting or half lunging straight, with a last second beat and finish. If I'm just close enough and time the beat just right I can often land the hit. About halfway through the bout I was having trouble making that work and was getting hit myself instead, so I abandoned that for other tactics. I got a point or two up, perhaps 9-7, then returned to the more passive approach, retreating a lot and trying to catch his fleches. Again that did not work and he came back and took a lead. So again I switched to the more aggressive style. In the last few points I was able to get my feint-beat-lunge to work, finally. Maybe by then he was getting tired or not quite as tuned into distance. Or maybe I was trying extra hard. Whatever it was I landed a couple nice feint-beat-lunges, tying it up and then getting to 14-13. And now I realize I can't quite remember what the last point was. I think it was another feint-beat-lunge, or some variation.
Anyway, it was a close bout, and a friendly one—Jim and I always enjoy fencing each other.
So I got into the final 8. I had been approaching this tournament differently than most before. Previously I tended to keep my expectations low and focus on enjoying things, even if I did poorly. Before bouts I would say to myself "this person is better than me and will win but I will make it as hard as I can for them, and I will relax and enjoy, and learn". That was probably a reasonable mental approach for most of my tournaments—I had trouble balancing the drive to fence well with anxiety about losing. I was able to minimize anxiety by using this low expectation approach. It certainly helped in earlier tournaments when the whole tournament structure and format was not fully familiar and comfortable. It definitely helped during last year's SAS International Veterans Tournament, which I did mediocre in but enjoyed immensely. But in my last few tournaments I've feel quite at home, comfortable with the ways tournaments work, and even not getting stressed out when I have major equipment problems, like at the Battle in Seattle Senior Epee. In fact it was at the Battle in Seattle events where I felt I was finally comfortable with the whole tournament thing.
Now add to this the ideas I keep hearing about how importance confidence is. I've been reading the fencing subreddit on Reddit and people there talk about how confidence is totally key. So I'd been thinking maybe it was time to change my mental game from "this person is better than me" to "I can take this person". And now add to that the way this particular tournament worked out. There were 18 fencers, four A, two B, two C, four D, three E, and two U. This was just enough to make it an A1 tournament, meaning 8th place was enough to earn an E and getting to 8th place would probably involve winning only one DE. It was a nearly perfect opportunity for me. So I went in not thinking "I won't do well but will enjoy and learn", rather "now is the time I will get an E at least, if not something more. I was mentally prepared to win the whole thing if it came down to it, although I would have been amazed if I had.
I don't know if this confident mental approach made any difference today—certainly part of it was the "luck" of fencing Jim in my DE—but I'm eager to try being more confident in future tournaments. I think I may have finally figured out how to balance expectation with anxiety, confidence with calmness and focus. Ready for a new level.
Anyway, so in the table of 8 I fenced Yuly Suvorov. Yuly is in my club and we fence fairly often. He earned his A in the Battle in Seattle and is without question a better fencer than me. However, I'm familiar with his style and sometimes in practice do pretty well against him. Just yesterday we fenced for a while and I think I scored more than he did. So I approached this DE with confidence—I can win, at the very least. I know, sort of, how to fence Yuly (avoid his parry 4, my god!) But, well, not this time. I made some dumb mistakes and he made some great hits, and it was over by the end of the second period, 15-5. But hey, I was fine with that.
In the other final 8 bouts Hans took out George, 15-9, Matthew Comes took out Andrew Lee, 15-7, and Varney took out Matessi, 15-9. While I was fencing Jim, earlier, I saw part of the end of a dramatic bout between Charlie Muñoz and Matthew Comes. It was 14-13 (I forget who had 14...Charlie I think), then 14-14. I was hoping Charlie would win, but alas, Matthew got the final point.
The first semifinal bout was Hans and Yuly. This was very interesting. They are both very good, A fencers, but Hans tends to be a fairly aggressive attacker while Yuly is a calmer counterattacker. It was quite close. Yuly made quite a few great hits and Hans got quite frustrated. But he seemed to be able to turn his frustration into energy, power, and focus. As the bout progressed Hans seemed stronger and stronger and Yuly seemed to be having more trouble dealing with him. In the end Hans won 15-12.
The second semifinal bout was Matthew Comes and John Varney. Again I was eager to watch. Matthew's style is one I have great trouble with, and I'm certainly not the only one. But Varney is, well, awesome. The bout began with Varney taking his usual very patient approach, keeping the distance wide and slowly retreating to his end of the strip, only to burst out with rapid actions and fleches. Matthew, who usually fences fairly aggressively, was being very careful. A few points were scored and they got to something lke 3-3. Then both fencers became even more careful, neither willing to commit to an attack. After a minute of that Russ called non-combativity and on to the next round it went. Then there was more action. Matthew got up a couple points, which forced Varney to be more aggressive. Things went back and forth, slowly and cautiously. Finally, near the end of the final period Varney was up two points and time was very short. It got to the point where Matthew had to score two points just to tie with only three seconds left. Usually when bouts get to that point it's essentially over. The person who is behind will launch fast attacks that usually fail or at least end up using up the remaining time.But Matthew was going to try. He got on guard in a position clearly meant to turn into a running charge. Russ said "fence" and Matthew charged while Varney retreated. I'm not even sure what happened, I think one of them jumped into the air, but somehow Matthew scored a single light. Everyone watching was amazed. But he was still a point down and when he asked for time remaining Russ said "one second". From the on guard lines with one second it's almost impossible to score against someone who will be retreating fast. Matthew got into "launch position" (Russ said he had to be "on guard" and not quite in such a sprinter's stance). Russ called "fence", Matthew ran forward, Varney back, and Matthew made one of his long toe touches. The light went off just as Russ called "time". It was literally just in the nick of time. He got the point. (In hindsight I might have the two final touches backwards, the toe touch might have been first) So they went into sudden death overtime. Matthew got priority, although Russ's hand gesture made it look like Varney had priority. Apparently Matthew thought Varney had priority, but Russ did say Matthew did. Craig told me the hand gesture was correct, even if it looked (and apparently was) a little confusing. In any case, they fenced a bit and Varney made the final touch, winning, 12-11. Still, those two final second touches by Matthew were probably the high point of amazing/ridiculous fencing in the whole tournament. Also, even if Matthew had won he still would have had to win the final to earn an A. Currently he's a B2014, so even coming in 2nd place in an A1 tournament would not change his rating.
The final bout was between Varney and Hans Engel—again interesting for being a more defensive fencer against a more offensive one. It was a great bout, very close all the way. As Hans had done with Yuly he seemed to gain energy as the bout progressed, while John seemed to be getting tired toward the end. Hans won, 15-12.
I wanted to take a bunch of video after I was out, but my camera battery was low and ran out after a bit. But I got a few bits and pieces (some of the sound is screwy for some reason):
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